Related papers: An Improved Version of the Symmetrical Immune Netw…
The symmetrical network theory is a framework for understanding the immune system, that dates back to the mid 1970s. The symmetrical network theory is based on symmetrical stimulatory, inhibitory and killing interactions between clones that…
The phenomenon of immunological memory has been known for a long time. But, the underlying mechanism is poorly understood. According to the theory of clonal selection the response to a specific invading antigen (e.g., bacteria) is offered…
According to Jerne's idiotypic network hypothesis, the adaptive immune system is regulated by interactions between the variable regions of antibodies, B cells, and T cells.1 The symmetrical immune network theory2,3 is based on Jerne's…
We consider the mutual interactions, via cytokine exchanges, among helper lymphocytes, B lymphocytes and killer lymphocytes, and we model them as a unique system by means of a tripartite network. Each part includes all the different clones…
When a fraction of a population becomes immune to an infectious disease, the population-wide infection risk decreases nonlinearly due to collective protection, known as herd immunity. Some studies based on mean-field models suggest that…
In this work we adopt a statistical mechanics approach to investigate basic, systemic features exhibited by adaptive immune systems. The lymphocyte network made by B-cells and T-cells is modeled by a bipartite spin-glass, where, following…
The similarity between neural and immune networks has been known for decades, but so far we did not understand the mechanism that allows the immune system, unlike associative neural networks, to recall and execute a large number of…
Jerne's idiotypic network theory postulates that the immune response involves inter-antibody stimulation and suppression as well as matching to antigens. The theory has proved the most popular Artificial Immune System (ais) model for…
A cornerstone of the classical view of tolerance is the elimination of self-reactive T cells during negative selection in the thymus. However, high-throughput T-cell receptor sequencing data has so far failed to detect substantial…
Symmetry arguments are frequently used -- often implicitly -- in mathematical modeling of natural selection. Symmetry simplifies the analysis of models and reduces the number of distinct population states to be considered. Here, I introduce…
Biological and artificial networks routinely make reliable distinctions between similar inputs, and the rules for making these distinctions are learned. In some ways, self/nonself discrimination in the immune system is similar, being both…
Selective control in a population is the ability to control a member of the population while leaving the other members relatively unaffected. The concept of selective control is developed using cell death or apoptosis in heterogeneous cell…
Deterministic complex networks that use iterative generation algorithms have been found to more closely mirror properties found in real world networks than the traditional uniform random graph models. In this paper we introduce a new,…
We are interested in modeling theoretical immunology within a statistical mechanics flavor: focusing on the antigen-independent maturation process of B-cells, in this paper we try to revise the problem of self vs non-self discrimination by…
Traditionally, it has been held that a central characteristic of stem cells is their ability to divide asymmetrically. Recent advances in inducible genetic labeling provided ample evidence that symmetric stem cell divisions play an…
We review research papers which use game theory to model the decision making of individuals during an epidemic, attempting to classify the literature and identify the emerging trends in this field. We show that the literature can be…
The coming 5G networks have been enabling the creation of a wide variety of new services and applications which demand a new network security architecture. Immunology is the study of the immune system in vertebrates (including humans) which…
The concept of network immunity, i.e., the robustness of the network connectivity after a random deletion of edges or vertices, has been investigated in biological or communication networks. We apply this concept to a self-assembling,…
We study the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game, whereby a coevolutionary rule is introduced that molds the random topology of the interaction network in two ways. First, existing links are deleted whenever a player…
The efficient recognition of pathogens by the adaptive immune system relies on the diversity of receptors displayed at the surface of immune cells. T-cell receptor diversity results from an initial random DNA editing process, called VDJ…